


Regarding

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enjolras is a Dalek, F/M, M/M, Roadtrip of destiny, Waiter there's plot in my character study, oh hello grantaire, why is there so much angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:48:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there are ill-advised decisions, pining dumbasses, a Road Trip of Destiny (TM), and crocheting.</p><p>It's all Eponine's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But if You Close Your Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psst you should totally leave a comment reviewing this so I know what I'm doing right/wrong.

It's Eponine's fault that they're standing outside a random gas station in Assfuck, Texas that looks like a tornado just hit it as they wait for their tank to fill up. The Snickers bar he's eating was his autonomous decision, but the location is definitely all Eponine's fault. It's probably, Grantaire decides as he licks chocolate off his fingers, because everything big in his life after meeting Eponine _was_ her fault, and probably a good number of things before.

This road trip is a prime example.

It had been her fault in that she had been the first to drag him to the Musain. And if he hadn't gone to the Musain, he would never have met Enjolras, and if he had never met Enjolras... Well, if wishes were horses.

(But Grantaire knows and Eponine knows and everyone knows that if wishes really were horses, Grantaire would still be walking because out of all the things he's wished for that's never been one of them.)

He crinkles up the wrapper and chucks it into the backseat about the same time Eponine says, "I think we should go to the Grand Canyon."

"I dunno." She lifts her head from where she had the map spread out over the hood of their car, one eyebrow raised. "I mean, it's just so touristy and predictable."

"Aww," she croons, jutting out her lower lip, "are we being to mainstream for the precious widdle hipster?"

Grantaire considers arguing, then remembered he was wearing both his red knit beanie and his Purity Ring shirt.

"Anyways," she continues, looking back down at her map and flipping her hair over one shoulder, "I've never been. We have a car, we have the cash, we have enough espresso to get us there in under two days. Let's go, you're driving first."

Grantaire grumbles, but slid into the driver's seat. He supposes it was only fair to take up the majority of the driving now, after Eponine had lugged his withdrawal-ridden ass to Connecticut.

There was a list of all of the things Grantaire was truly proud of in his life. Sweating on a cheap motel bed in Hartford while the best girl in the world stayed up for thirty-six straight hours to make sure he didn't go into seizures was not on it.

Eponine drops into a nap around the time they left Assfuck-- which was actually called Dalhart-- and leaves Grantaire alone with his demons and a Bastille CD. So he told the demons to can it and flips on "Icarus," because songs that were highly descriptive and slightly prophetic of his life are his choice of relaxing music.

Life choices are not a strong suit for Grantaire.

———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———  
They never broke up, precisely. That would have required Grantaire to have been able to look Enjolras in the eye and say "We're over," and he would never have been able to do that.

Instead, he had drunk his way to the bottom of a bottle of tequila and gone crying to Éponine-- unfortunately literally-- and complained to her. Complained about fights, and missed art shows, and words that were never returned.

He was midsentence when she interrupted him to ask, "Are you happy?" It was a strange question to ask someone practically sweating shitty, cheap tequila and ugly crying on your shoulder.

Grantaire blinked. "I love him."

"That isn't the same thing. It isn't even close."

"I-" Grantaire started, "I... Some days, I feel like I'm fucking _flying_."

"But only some?" Éponine asked. She wasn't being gentle, but she wasn't being harsh. She sounded like she was waiting for something. A train, maybe, to take her far, far away. You know where you hope this train will take you...

"Some days I feel like he's the most caustic addiction I've ever had." He hadn't meant to say the words, hadn't been aware he was even thinking them, but now that they were out there was no disguising the truth in them. And then he couldn't stop. "God, Éponine, no one loves Enjolras the way I do, I mean, who loves the light like a blind man? And I'm so, so lucky he's even looking at me. I just want to be with him, but it's... God. You remember when I was floating. It's like that, I just want him all the time, and I don't even know if he wants me some of the time."

Éponine just looked at him, like she could maybe see inside him. She probably could. Nobody knew him like Éponine.

"Do you-- Jesus, R, do you ever want to be anywhere but here?"

Grantaire fumbled to prop himself up to look in her eyes. Grantaire and Éponine were those two friends that were Banned Forever from being on the same Taboo team because they could basically read each others minds, so Grantaire knew exactly what she was trying to ask him.

The train hit.

"Yes," he breathed. "God yes. Let's go tonight. Can you drive?"

She nodded furiously. "Do you need help getting to your place?" At his wave of dismissal she continued. "Go grab a bag, I'll get the car and be at yours in ten."

Grantaire probably ran to his apartment, but he couldn't tell you that for sure. All he knew is that soon he was using his innate and unfortunately oft-used skills at being practically KGB levels of stealthy for how drunk he was.

He was giddy. He was going to do it. He was going to go with Éponine and they were going to save lives and go to Disney Land and--

And Enjolras was back.

He was asleep in their bed, shirt rucked up over his belly, legs tangled in sheets, brow furrowed. Grantaire's breath caught in his throat and he couldn't remember why he wanted to leave. He could see the bit of hip where he had Sharpied "я тебя люблю" because there just weren't enough languages for Grantaire to tell Enjolras he loved him, and it was fading, and he should rewrite it.

They had been fighting, hadn't they? They always seemed to be doing that lately. They fought, then Grantaire drank, so Enjolras went after him for his alcoholism, and he drank more until they fought about something else entirely.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.

Enjolras was always one of the world's deepest sleepers. Grantaire could just slip into bed and pretend he never wanted to leave, like he's not waiting for the other shoe to drop daily, like he's okay with being the other women because blind spacemen can see how married Enjolras is to The Cause--

Someone was pulling at his sleeve. Oh, hello, Éponine.

He just gave her a helpless look.

She let go of his sleeve. He could hear her rummaging around behind him but didn't turn around because he couldn't look away from the god in his bed.

They were really going to do this, aren't they? They were going to leave it all behind. Was he never going to see Enjolras again? If so, maybe it was best that it was like this, where he was calm and as close to Grantaire's as he was ever going to be instead of shouting his love letters to Lady Liberty at a crowd.

Éponine grabbed his sleeve again, and this time she had a bag, and it was time to go, wasn't it? She reached into his pocket at extracted his cell phone, tossing it onto the bedside table, and jerked her head at the fire escape. He started towards the main room, but she hissed, "I already locked the door," and that was that, wasn't it.

He looked down at the prone figure of the love of his life, and he wanted to burst into poetry. He wanted to weave together words about how much he'll miss Enjolras and he wants to say something so beautiful his Apollo can't sleep through it and wakes up to tell him to stay. But he's never been a poet. He's an atheist, and they can't have gods. Jehan would know what to say, but all Grantaire can think of is "goodbye" and he still can't tell Enjolras that, not yet, so he says nothing and just slips out after Éponine instead.

He was starting to go to sleep when Éponine suddenly tells him, "I don't think they can."

"Whah?" was Grantaire completely coherent reply.

"Blind men. I don't think they can really love the light. I think they love the idea of light, because people tell them how great it is, but how do they know they love it? It's like saying you love shrimp when you've never eaten it." She took her eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. "I think you have to be able to see-- _really_ see-- something before you can love it."

Éponine was trying to tell him something, but he was drunk and sleepy and he wanted to wake up and be next to Enjolras, Enjolras who was steadily getting farther away, so he ignored her and went to sleep instead.  
———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———  
Éponine wakes up after they've been driving for about two hours. She offers to take over, but she snuggles into her seat even as she's asking so he says no. She mumbles an "okay" and pulls the flannel _Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!_ blanket that had been fifty-nine cents at Target up to her chin and goes back to sleep.

Grantaire just keeps driving forwards, and tries to pretend it doesn't feel symbolic.

 

 


	2. Love Without Your Heartbeat

Grantaire and Éponine met while backpacking in Europe.

Grantaire had just been left with roughly twenty thousand dollars from his parents with the assumption that he would use the money to either drink himself in an early grave or find a place to live. Either way, the understanding that he would never contact them again was unspoken but glaring.

He didn't touch the money for years.

Instead, he used the five hundred from his mother's sister, the only relative other than his own sister to do anything but disdain him, and the thousand or so he had saved up for this eventuality to buy a ridiculously cheap ticket, a big-ass backpack, and a water purifier. Slinging it together with a weird thermal sleeping bag and a one-burner mini-stove he requisitioned from his parent's camping supplies and a copy of _Good Omens_ , he lit out and was on a train through France before the week was out.

Camping grounds in Europe are nothing like camping grounds in America, he soon discovered. For one thing, you don't need a car to get to them. This is because they're in the middle of the fucking cities. He was at a giant park in the middle of Paris when he met Éponine.

She had a tent and was surprisingly willing to let him share (later she would tell him she had the gaydar of the gods and also wanted to read _Good Omens_ ). She kicked in her sleep, but it beat the communal tent and so he stayed. It turned out they both had unlimited train passes, so after leaving Paris they respected the time-honored tradition of getting on a train at night, sleeping like the dead, then waking up and exploring whatever city they had woken up in.

Grantaire has fond memories of stuttering out basic Portuguese in Lisbon and ending up with pink sugar candies that melted on the tongue and staring in awe at the Fisherman's Bastion in Budapest, hand in hand with the girl who was now the closest thing he had to a family.

They roved for about six more months before Grantaire realized he needed to pay for a ticket back home and got a job. He probably should have prepared better, but when he did things, he did them all the way. When he drank, he drained the bottle. When he started his short and ill-advised courtship with drugs, he jumped nearly straight into heroin. When he fell in love with Enjolras, he fell in love at first sight. And when he decided to go backpacking in Europe, he bought a one-way ticket and told the future to fuck off. Éponine had just laughed at him and found a good place to set up their tent.  
———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———  
They get to the Grand Canyon in a little under twelve hours, not counting the six where they take breaks to eat and nap, and pull over in a parking lot so Grantaire, pleading driver's exhaustion, can rest some more before their Excellent Adventure (because like fuck was this a Bogus Journey). They go on a tour and lean over the edge, giggling, when the woman guiding it isn't looking. They end up buying a postcard with the Mittens on it and a keychain to send to Gavroche before Éponine decides that it's imperative they go hiking in Canyon Shelley. It takes well over two hours, mostly because Grantaire still isn't exactly back at his physical peak, and he sweats almost as badly as he did in the weeks following him quitting the bottle. Éponine slows down when she needs to, stopping every now and then to let him catch his breath and call words of encouragement to him (which basically amount to "hurry it up, fuckhead, there are senior citizens trying to get around you.").

It's perfect.

They get root beer floats afterwards, and Grantaire isn't a living metaphor for a while.

———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———

Grantaire fully realizes two things: firstly, he isn't as quite gay as a lime green leisure suit, but just barely, and secondly, Éponine was quite probably his soulmate. Their epic friendship is probably the reason he isn't six feet under, to be honest. The rest of Les Amis are wonderful, but they can't handle Grantaire when he's at his worst like Éponine can. Most importantly, Éponine knew him first. She remembered who he was before he took one look at the worst best decision of his life and fell headfirst.

She remembers more than "Enjolras's cynical alcoholic boyfriend." She remembered stories about working in the local mixed martial arts center in exchange for lessons and "Hallelujah" sung because it was Marius' first date with dear Cosette and she just wanted to wallow. She remembers learning how to do an aerial cartwheel and posing for paintings.

She remembers, because someone had to and no one else could.

Of course, this means she also has to remember the bad as well-- holding his hair back as he puked, staying up with him when he got a concussion in a bar fight even though she had work in the morning, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, riding in the ambulance with him after an OD. Rehab. Pills. AA meetings. And Enjolras.

After Marius' "burst of light," Éponine had done the mature thing-- she had gotten absolutely smashed and watched _RENT_. Grantaire had brought ice cream, and they had cuddled up on their couch and sung along to "Without You" and hadn't even bothered to pretend they weren't both crying for the last forty minutes of the movie.

She had continued to stew in her misery for another couple days until she sat down and had an intervention with herself. She came up with a few basic rules. The list consisted of this:

1\. People feel how they feel, and even when that sucks you have to respect it.

2\. It is never just one person's fault when a relationship doesn't work out the way you want it to.

3\. Get up and do something.

4\. Now.

5\. Go.

6\. Stop writing this list and do it.

It was short, but she thought it held some good points, and it helps her with Grantaire. It helps her keep perspective because she knows she can't blame Enjolras for the entirety of the ever-growing pile of shit their relationship was turning into. She can harbor fond thoughts of punching him in the nose for his contributions, of course, but she knows Gantaire can be difficult with his now-I'm-happy-now-I'm-sad, go-away-no-wait-come-back-no-wait-just-go revolving door emotions. She knows how hard it could be to be with someone who didn't take antidepressants because you weren't supposed to mix them with alcohol. She knows all the good parts, too, like how he can learn basically anything but math and sings like an angel and is your best bet in a barroom brawl. She knows it's worth it, but she knows loving him is hard.

That's just fine with her. That's the only way she knows how.

But Enjolras didn't know how to love hard. He didn't know how to love, period, only that it was something that crept up on him and nearly overwhelmed him when he looked at his makeshift family. He didn't know how to work at it, to struggle to keep it. He didn't know how to be openly affectionate, and he didn't know what to do with Grantaire, who loves hard and fierce and loud.

So it's not Enjolras' fault that he has the emotional capacity of a mentally deficient turtle (and Éponine and Grantaire may or may not have a plastic turtle that had cotton with a gold nail-polish overcoat glued to the tiny green head). And it's not Grantaire's fault that he needed just a little more than he got.

This will not, of course, stop Éponine from shaving Enjolras' stupid blond head as he sleeps. This is what makes Bahorel refer to her as "the scariest motherfucker in a skirt." Éponine just smirks whenever the he says it and gives the most terrifying hair toss that has ever graced the face of the earth.

So she keeps Grantaire sane when he wants to just go back-- to go back to Enjolras, to go back to the bottle, to go back to who he was. And "who Grantaire was" was just heading for an early grave. So she had gone with a crazy spark of an idea and dragged her best friend along on a road trip. They had stayed to make sure Gavroche, between Montparnasse and Les Amis, was safe, then hit the road.

It had been exhilarating. And yes, for the first few days Grantaire had been miserable and determined cold turkey was the way to do things (all or nothing, remember?) even though the things it did to him were less than pleasant and they had sort of felt a tug at the bases of their skulls, like someone had a shot lined up and that's where it was going to hit, but then Grantaire hit the euphoria stage of sobriety and Éponine couldn't help but laugh along.  
  
If Grantaire is Icarus, Éponine is the sea and he when he falls he falls towards her.

———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———

She takes over driving, because Grantaire is still playing the exhaustion card from the hike (the drama queen) and pops in a _Hits of the 70s_ CD because she can only listen to so much of Grantaire's melancholic not-quite-hipster stuff. He slumps down in his seat and pouts, but that stopped working on her long ago. She rolls her eyes and starts belting out "My Sharona."

Grantaire tries to resist. He really does.

Less than a minute later they're speeding down the interstate, serenading neighboring cars with "never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind, always get it up for the touch of the younger kind!"

"My-i-aye-i-aye!" Grantaire shouts to a vaguely shell-shocked old lady in the car next to them.

"Woo!" laughs Éponine.

"My my my my Sharona!"

The next hour in the car passes a lot faster.

They're halfway through a round of "that's alright, that's alright, that's alllriiiiiight"s in "Mysterious Waves" when the gas light bings at them.

"Alright," Grantaire says as he turned the volume nob down, "where are we?"

"Uhh... GPS says about two hours from Pheonix. You wanna drive through tonight?"

"Should we? I mean, it's not really on The List."

"Yeaahh..." Éponine chews on a peice of hair that had blown into her mouth. "But it's a straight shot from there to LA, which is. We can crash in Phoenix, and the Google wizard says it's about six hours from there if we, you know, go the speed limit."

They end up stopping at a roadside gas station (who knew those still existed?) to get gas, water, and peanutbutter cracker, most of which are consumed by Grantaire.

"I swear," he says around a mouthful, "I think these replaced alcoholism. They're my new addiction, Epipen, and I regret nothing."

"You will if you keep calling me that," she answers.

" _Nothing_ ," he hisses, grabbing another packet.

They're not going anywhere at the moment, just sitting on the side of the road on what appears to be a petrified log, and they actually have an okay signal, so they go ahead with their daily call to Gavroche. They dial and flip it to speaker mode. Montparnasse picks up on the fourth ring.

"Clarice, hey kid, did you want to talk to Gavroche?"

"Ah." Éponine says. "Do we have visiting Amis?"

"Yeah, I have a few customers, but I can get Babet or someone else to cover if you want me to come get you. What's you address, again?"

"If we wanted people to know where we are, we wouldn't be calling you on a burner," Grantaire calls over Éponine's shoulder. He can imagine the effort it's taking Montparnasse to not call Grantaire a melodramatic fuck, and it amuses him greatly.

"Well, Clarice, if you're sure," and yes, yes he does sound a bit strained there. Grantaire giggles. "I'll give the phone to Gav now."

There's a breif scuffle, then, "Heya, Clarice."

Éponine smiles. "Heya, pup. You behaving?"

"Yeah, I'm almost done with the math, hold on." There are a few clopping noises in the background before Gavroche's voice come back over the line.

"Alright, I'm out of earshot. When are you two getting back?"

"Uh... Two weeks, maybe?" She looks over at Grantaire, who shrugs. "We're stating in Phoenix tonight, then heading over to Los Angeles tomorrow. After that, Grantaire want to test his sobriety in Vegas so we're staying in one of the rediculous, light-up hotels, then up to Rushmore, and then we're heading back."

"Alright. Azelma says she misses you."

"No she doesn't."

"Okay, so she doesn't say it but she does."

After that, they spend the next twenty minutes chatting about the sights they've seen ("Grantaire was covered in mud and getting chased by a tiny old lady with an umbrella, Gav, _of course_ there are pictures."), his most recent stunt ("I'm pretty sure they know it's you, not many sixth graders take the initiative to flush cherry bombs down all the toilets in the boys' room." "But if they can't _prove_ it..."), and about Grantaire's dietary restrictions ("Don't mock my pain, the rabbit food I'm on causes me suffering enough.") until someone calls up to ask Gavroche if he's off the phone with his _giiirlfriieeeeennd_ \--oh, hello, Courfeyrac-- and he has to go.

"Call me tomorrow?" he asks.

"Call you tomorrow, pup," Éponine confirms.

"Hey, if I'm a pup, does that make you a--" Éponine hangs up. Grantaire just grins, wide and lazy.

"That boy," he says, "is going to grow up and be absolutely terrifying. More so than he already is, anyways."

"Come one, asshole," Éponine says as she stands, stretching and patting off the seat of her shorts. "Let's go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'm here and on Tumbr at occamsphaser.


	3. A Dark World Aches for a Splash of Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I got tired of writing angst (yeah, I didn't think it was possible either) and wanted some fluff. I present to you: my official E/R get-together for the Regarding 'verse.

It took a ridiculous amount of time for Grantaire to realize Enjolras felt not-exactly-platonically towards him, and it wasn't even because of his crippling self-doubt.

What had basically happened was that Enjolras felt the flutterings of young love and his brain had said to him, "What is this nonsense? This is not liberty! Suppress! SUPPRESS!"

(Or at least this is how Éponine and Grantaire like to imagine it happened when they are slightly annoyed with their fearless leader and run around yelling "SUPPRESS!" in their best Dalek voices. They're not wrong.)

So he had clamped down on his feelings until they were too strong to be handled thusly and got up to smack him on the face. It happened on a Thursday.

It wasn't an important Thursday. There was no protest to be planned, it wasn't near finals, and only Courfeyrac had a paper to work on but that was his own fault for leaving it to the last minute. So, no, it wasn't an important Thursday at all except that Enjolras looked up to see Grantaire frowning in concentration at his sketchbook with a streak of graphite down his nose and just thought, "I want to touch you more than I want to breathe right now."

And apparently? Enjolras' reaction to finding out he was full-on in love with a cynical drunk who liked to paint, and made excellent chocolate chip pancakes, and could recite _Princess Bride_ and _Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure_ and _Across the Universe_ from memory, and-- anyways. His reaction reaction to finding out he was head over ass in love with Grantaire was to be the grumpiest of the revolutionaries. He would walk outside and see a tree, and remember the time Grantaire agreed to paint a weeping willow on Jehan's shoulder for Earth Day. He would then glare at any trees he saw for the rest of the day. This process was repeated at length and with various inanimate objects. People in love were supposed to see the world with rosy hues and sunsets and flowers, but Enjolras was the marble lover of liberty that suddenly, desperately wished he knew how to be human enough to handle these new feelings.

He took inventories of the little things Grantaire did. How his short hair ended up in vivid spikes from where he ran his hands through it while painting. How he had a massive sweet tooth but would drink coffee black as pitch to wake himself up. How you could always tell when Éponine was upset because he would walk in with multicolored nails from their "girls night." He would look upon the red-eyed, paint-splattered visage of the resident artist and his stomach would decide it wanted to qualify for an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.  
———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———  
It took an embarrassing amount of time for him to realize he was, in fact, in love. Love, in its more potent stages, tends to strongly resemble indigestion, so he spent the first few weeks of his first great (human) love on a steady diet of Tums and Pepto Bismol. He explained his symptoms first to Joly, who frowned, said he had no idea, and asked politely if Enjolras had been trying to cook for himself again, and then to Combeferre, who raised his eyebrow in that way that signified he was very pointedly _not_ laughing at someone and told him to talk to Jehan.

There were very limited things that Jehan, and only Jehan, was the sole expert in the group of. These consisted of: botany, poetry, combat jijutsu, and matters of the heart. None of these were things Enjolras could relate to his problem, nor did he particularly want to. But Combferre had an annoying habit of being right about everything, so with much trepidation he knocked on Jehan's door.

Jehan answered the door, slightly bleary-eyed and unshaven, which meant Enjolras had woken him up. There are very few things Jehan loves more than love itself, and sleep is one of them, so Enjolras swallowed, and blurted out "Combeferre sent me," before the mild-mannered poet could kill him with his mind.

Jehan went from angry to concerned in about three second. "Is everyone okay?"

"Everyone's fine," Enjolras assured him, "I've just been having these weird stomach aches lately, and he told me to talk to you."

Jehan nodded. "I'm going to go make tea."

(Tea was Jehan' one true love. It was edible nature. He very rarely went anywhere without a thermos of his custom blend, loving it all the more for the cliché. He was quick to offer tea to others-- if you were sick, he made you tea; if you were upset, he made you tea; if you were happy; he made you tea; if you didn't have any tea, he made sure that this was an informed decision to remain tea-less and not, in fact, a mistake, then made you tea anyways just to be on the safe side. Grantaire had made him a rack for all the boxes of tea leaves he owned for Festivus one year; the artist hadn't walked into the Musain without a crown of flowers and a smily face on his cheek for the next week and a half.)

Before long, they were sitting on Jehan, Éponine (who didn't actually live there, but try telling her that), and Grantaire's couch. There was a line of faded navy paint, barely visible against the grey material, and-- oh. There was the stomach ache. He must have been making a face-- although there was also a popular theory that the resident poet was psychic-- because Jehan was leaning over and feeling his forehead with the back of his hand.

"You don't have a temperature," he said, frowning. "Can you tell me a little bit about it?"

"Well," Enjolras began, "I mostly get the stomachaches at the Musain, and sometimes at rallies? It didn't happen at the last one, though. Oh, and I got one when we all went out to eat yesterday."

Jehan was still, teacup lifted just off his lap. "Hey, Enjolras? Who from Les Amis was at the last rally?"

"Um..." Enjolras pursed his lips together, trying to remember. "Me, obviously, you, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Marius and Cosette, Bahorel, Bossuet and Joly (and I think Musichetta came for a couple hours?), and Feuilly. And I think Gav stopped in with the incredibly shady bartender who watches him sometimes because Éponine and Grantaire were in... Albany, I think?"

"Mmm. Did you have one on the way here?" Jehan asked. Enjolras shook his head. "Yesterday, at dinner, did you have one during the appetizers?" Enjolras shook his head again.  
"No. Why would that matter? I've been having them for over a week, I think we can rule out the spring rolls."

"No, it's just..." Jehan paused for a moment. "Grantaire didn't get there until after the appetizers."

Enjolras stared at him blankly. "Yeah..? He had Éponine order for him, said he had to stay late on his shift because the girl who takes over for him had to wait for her babysitter."

Jehan's leg started to bounce. "And Grantaire goes to the Musain. And to rallies, except for the last one."

"Yes?" Enjolras had the sinking suspicion his flowery friend knew precisely what was going on.

Jehan went completely still before he all but tossed his teacup onto the table in front of him, ignoring the bits of liquid that rose up over the side and splashed onto the table, and raced over to his bookshelf. He scanned for a minute, then braced his hand against one overstuffed row so he could pull out one book without bringing down the shelf. He then took said book and threw it at Enjolras' head.

Enjolras didn't even have time to protest before Jehan was bouncing and telling him, "The pink Post-It, open it to the pink Post-It and _read_ ," a faint pink flush spreading over his face. Enjolras had enough experience with his friends to know that when a crazy person tells you to do something, unless it's "kill someone" or "buy Starbucks coffee," you indulge them.

Flipping it open to the page Jehan had indicated, he started to read. "'Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near...' I'm sorry, why are you having me read this?"

"Who's there every time you get sick? And isn't when you feel fine? And who's apartment is ot that you didn't get a stomachache until you were in?"

And then it all clicked. "Grantaire?" Jehan beamed. "Oh. You don't think the paint's making me sick, do you?"

Jehan giggled. _Giggled_. It was terrifying. "Go away now, I want to sleep. But think about it."

And that was how Enjolras ended up back at his, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac's apartment, with a poetry book but without a clue as to what had just happened.

This happened on Wednesday. You know what happens on Thursday.  
———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—–———–—––———–—–———  
If Jehan had his way, they would have had their first kiss on a bridge or something, with the water reflecting the rays of the setting sun. If Courfeyrac had his way, they would have had their first kiss like the ones in cheesy romcoms. If Combeferre had his way, they would have had their first kiss within an hour of meeting each other and saved the rest of them the drama. As it is, it happens like this.

It had been a month after the Thursday, and Enjolras was still freaking out (he may or may not have run to Combeferre to bitch at him because "I'm in love!" "Yes." "Why didn't you tell me, you dick?" "I _did_ send you to Jehan."). He managed to stay collected, at least enough to provide counterarguments to his cynic's denouncements, and he didn't gaze longingly at his beloved or any other Harlequin shit, but every so often Grantaire would wrap his lips around the neck of a bottle of beer and Enjolras would think, "Last night I came harder than I did the last time I had actual sex thinking about the things you can do with your tongue."

At some point in the second week, Courfeyrac wheedled Grantaire into teaching him how to tie cherry stems into knots with his tongue. Apparently, Grantaire's best was a little under two seconds. Enjolras very nearly had heatstroke.

Then came the night Grantaire came to a meeting completely sober, and stayed that way. About three quarters of the way through, though, the artist crept out into the back alley. After the meeting had wrapped up, Enjolras put Combeferre in charge of making sure everyone left with everything they came in with, and followed him out. Grantaire looked at him as the door clicked closed.

"Hello, Apollo," he said with a shaky smile. "Come to shine upon the unenlightened, have we?"

Enjolras went to stand beside him. He was aware that he was not the most sympathetic, or gentlest, or emotionally available, but "Are you alright?" seemed like solid ground so he went with it.

"Yeah." Grantaire huffed out a laugh. "I just promised Éponine that I would go a night without drinking, and that girl is like a bloodhound for broken promises. She'd light me on fire."

"Ah." The threat would be much less, well, threatening had Éponine not, in fact, set a man on fire a year prior for giving Musichetta shit because of her boyfriends. Bahorel had trailed after her like a puppy for a month.

"So, yeah." Grantaire tried to smile, and ended up with a grimace, and ended up just quirking his lips the slightest bit up, and Enjolras should stop thinking about his mouth, but, but, but...

But Enjolras knew that sometimes, things just lined up and the time was right. He didn't think it had anything to do with gods or planets aligning, but nevertheless it happened. And now? Now was the right time.

He leaned in and kissed Grantaire with the blistering certainty he gave all his other axioms.

It was brief and chaste, and it changed everything.

When Enjolras pulled back, Grantaire was staring at him.

"Why," he licked his lips and stopped, apparently searching for the right words. "What was that?"

"That was a kiss," Enjolras answered.

"I know that!" Grantaire snapped. "I mean why... Is this, like, a pity thing?"

"No," Enjolras said, leaning back in slightly.

"What are you--" Grantaire started, jerking back.

"R," Enjolras cut him off, "if you don't want this, you can tell me no and I'll respect it, but otherwise, I would really like to kiss you again."

Something flickered in Grantaire's eyes that tugged on the knots in Enjolras' belly, and they met in the middle, Grantaire tangling his hands in Enjolras' hair to tug his face down a little, and one of Enjolras' hands on Grantaire's neck, the other on his hip.

"But seriously," Grantaire gasped when they came up for air, "what brought this on?"

Unbeknownst to the two of them Enjolras could have saved the lot of them a load of drama and Éponine and Grantaire thousands in gas money by answering what he was actually thinking, which was: the way you always have graphite or paint or chalk on your hands, the way you're one of the most intelligent people I know (and I know Combeferre), the way you run your hands through your hair like you know it's exactly what I want to be doing, the way you bite your lip when you're concentrating, your eyes, your shoulders, you fingers, your nose, your everything.

Instead, he told Grantaire to shut up and kissed him again.


	4. Silver Bracelets on Her Wrists and Flowers in Her Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan, yay.

After The Incident, Grantaire did the obligatory stint in rehab. He went through withdrawal, the shakes and the sweat and the Godawful things it did to his stomach. But he went through all the "please,God, I swear I'll never touch another needle as long as I live"s because Éponine expected him to and because he would actually like to not be found dead in his own shit and vomit with a needle in his arm. The thing is, rehab and the real world? Different. Very, very different. In the real world, there was no guard against him and his vices but the crumbs sense of self-respect and a girl who couldn’t take care of him twenty-four/seven.

When Éponine picked him up she had a duffel bag in the backseat, and Grantaire spent the majority of the twenty minute car ride through rural Vermont steeling himself to be dropped off at a homeless shelter like an abandoned dog. She pulled up a gravel driveway, the bouncing of the car doing unkind things to Grantaire’s stomach, and when they reached the large house at the end of it he was about ready to hurl himself out his window and make with the ugly crying in a corner.

 “Alright,” Éponine said after pulling to a stop, undoing her seatbelt, and opening her door, “grab your shit, I need to introduce you the lady who runs this place.”

That, Grantaire would admit, was not exactly what he had been expecting her to say. Confused, a bit frightened, and really wishing he had a drink, Grantaire grabbed the duffel and slunk after her. A cheery woman with red cheeks and white in her hair stepped out on the porch to meet him.

"Oh, hello… Grant, isn't it?" she asked.

"Grantaire," Éponine answered because Grantaire himself was still not sure if answering wrong would get him tossed in the Gorge of Eternal Peril or not. She didn't look like a serial killer, but then Éponine didn't look like she could break you in half with her little finger and sheer force of will and Grantaire didn't look like someone who crocheted, so there you go. "I'm Éponine. We talked on the phone?"

 "Yes, yes, welcome to Myriel," she said, still smiling sunnily and ushering them inside.

And thus, Grantaire was a resident of Myriel Halfway House, a center for recovering addicts. It was here he met Jehan.

If Grantaire ever broke his deal with the poet and told people that they’d met at a halfway house, they would probably assume that Jehan had been a volunteer, there to read poetry to lost souls and braid flowers in their hair. As it were, every man has his vices, and Jehan’s had been opium.

“It wasn’t easy to quit, you know,” Jehan had told him one night. It was two hours past curfew and they were supposed to be in their rooms, but it was just so much more fun to sneak out onto the roof and stare at stars. “It’s just… I couldn’t get any for a few days and I started to get, well, you know. And then I just had this _epiphany_ and saw how dependent I was. I was dependent on people to give me money, I was dependent on my dealer, and I was dependent on the drug itself. And I _hate_ being dependent on anything other than myself. I want to be autonomous and unfettered. Honestly, I was just so irritated and anxious in general at that point that I kind of snapped. I broke my pipe and stormed out of my apartment. God, I was a mess—runny nose, sweaty, red-eyed, the whole mess. The _stares_ I got. Eventually, I calmed down. I’d had the number of this hotline ever since I started, figured if it all went to shit I could use it. Anyways, I called and they set me up in a rehab clinic, and the rest is history.”

Grantaire just lay on the bumpy roof beside him and listened. Sometimes, you just had to _say_ something to somebody; the trick was finding somebody who wouldn’t judge you. The weight of the world is a heavy thing to carry alone, but there’s no use in splitting the burden with someone who’ll only grab on to pull you down.

“I didn’t decide to stop taking heroin,” he said after a moment. “My dealer did. Sold be a less-than-pure portion. Had an overdose, nearly died. Apparently, the fact that I’m here at all, especially with no permanent damage, is a miracle. Éponine, she’s the girl who visits me and brings the cookies, she came from some rough places, so she knew how to set all this up. Looking back, I wish I had an epiphany too. I don’t like who I was back then—well. Self-esteem issues are neither new nor scarce for me. But I was always so cloudy back then, just floating. I was myself, but without any of the good parts.”

“I was scared my friends were going to find out I was using. I mean, I was careful, I only smoked when I thought I could get away with it, and I'm pretty bizarre on a regular basis, but I thought they would know and…I don’t know. Just, like, shun me, I guess. Well. I'm pretty sure Combeferre _does_ know. But Combeferre knows everything.”

“I'm _still_ scared Éponine is going to drop me and drive of for Ontario after she’s sure I won’t relapse. I mean, she’s had so much shit go down in her life already, who am I to add to it? And I'm scared that now that I can’t hide behind my drug habits, people are going to see what I'm like when I'm not high all the time and decide I'm still not worth it.”

To be honest, the late-night rendezvous with Jehan probably helped more than Myriel itself did. They traded random facts about themselves (“My mom was military, so I practiced a lot of combat-style jujutsu.” “No shit? I used to work at a mixed martial arts gym for extra cash. After about a month a cleaning up puke, sweat, and blood I think the instructors felt bad for me and let me attend their classes for free.”), had deep, spiritual conversations (“But really, what if we’re all, like, a starfish’s daydream and nothing we do has any intrinsic value?” “Grantaire, if you have snuck pot in here, I will burn this friendship bracelet.”), and basically latched onto each other. When time Éponine came to the house for the final time to bring Grantaire back, she found two boys waiting for her.

“Hey,” Grantaire told her before she had the chance to ask. “This is Jehan. He just beat an opium addiction, and I'm adding him into our codependent broship. Now, let’s go get me a beer, shall we?” At Éponine’s eyebrow, he added, “I went to rehab for heroin, and hey presto! Heroin free! I refuse to bow down any longer to the beast that is double withdrawal, keep me from my alcohol any longer and I will started describing the things escaping my body with graphic, realistic emphasis on sound and color. Come along now, pip pip.”

And because Éponine has always known when she is fighting a losing battle, Grantaire got buzzed under not one, but two pairs of watchful eyes.

Éponine loved Jehan, because not loving Jehan is a leading symptom of being dead inside. Where around Grantaire he’d been free-spirited, Éponine produced blushes and stammers. Grantaire found this steadily funnier and funnier as he got steadily drunker and drunker.

“Shut up!” a red-faced Jehan had hissed at Grantaire, who was past the point of trying to hide his laughter. “I'm bad around girls I don’t know! I can’t help it!”

“Didn't you tell me about the time you punched out a biker at a rally? And _this_ is what intimidates you?” Grantaire paused his laughter long enough to remind him incredulously.

“I knooooooow,” Jehan all but wailed.

And because after four months of living in close quarters with someone, pouring your soul out to someone, and making friendship bracelets with someone you could hardly just treat them to a drink and say, “Well, it’s been swell!” Grantaire and Éponine woke up in Éponine’s shitty apartment the next morning with Jehan sprawled across them. They looked at each other, shrugged, and decided the best possible option at the moment was crepes.

It turned out Jehan’s fashion palate was even weirder outside rehab lite than inside. Grantaire had to give him props for refusing to give a fuck in a floral trench coat, a yellow crepe shirt (“Because we’re going for crepes, get it?”), bright blue cuffed shorts, tights with daisies on them, and white canvas sneakers. All in all, the poet looked as though he had fallen into a kindergartner’s wardrobe, been shaken around inside it a bit, and dumped out on a pile of floral patterns.

There was polite, my-brain-is-not-yet-online chatter until Éponine had about a third of here crepe left and asked Jehan, “So, do you have a place to stay?”

“Oh!” Jehan said around a mouthful of strawberries. “Yes, thank you for worrying, but yes. I'm heading back to school—I had quite an absence, but I managed to get quite a bit done when I had had nothing else to do. Actually, I wanted to know if you maybe wanted to come along? Grantaire said neither of you were enrolled anywhere yet, and while I don’t have a car I can help with gas.”

Éponine and Grantaire didn't even pretend like they were going to say no. They may not have any immediate plans to enroll, but they met on an epic journey through Europe. They have lived in ten different states in seven months, not including Grantaire’s rehab stint. They are wanderers, the vagrant children of Cain. They go where the wind takes them, and that day the wind wore floral.

They drive up to Brooklyn, which makes Éponine uneasy because returning the scene of her childhood wasn’t doing good things for her, but they’re on the opposite side of the city from where she grew up and she had heard a few years back that her parents had hopped over to Canada, so she was alright.

In the span of the next few months, Éponine and Grantaire enrolled in Jehan’s university, and Jehan pulled several highly dubious acts to ensure their acceptance. Jehan then moved out of his overcrowded apartment and in with Grantaire, and Éponine moved in with a lovely girl named Musichetta. But that’s hardly the important bit. That came earlier.

“Hey, so, there’s this thing,” Jehan piped up as they were crossing state line into New York.

“Your serial killer father has come back into your life, demanding you take up the family business?” Grantaire asked, mostly asleep in the back.

“No, nothing like that, it’s just…” Jehan hesitated. “My friends, they don’t really know I was in rehab the last couple months. I told them I was taking a break to focus on my writing and attend this seminar in Canada. I know!” he exclaimed before anyone else had the chance to say anything. “I know it was a coward’s exit, but I wanted to keep being the innocent, romantic poet and not the one who, well, made a mess of everything. It’s why I went to rehab in Vermont and not in, you know, the state I actually live in. Enjolras volunteers, or knows people who volunteer, in basically all these rehab programs—it’s part of him trying to change the world by being an unstoppable force of nature and fair trade coffee. So, can you maybe lie horribly when you meet them and say we met in Canada? I’ll tell them, I swear, but not right now.”

Éponine and Grantaire have done worse things for worse reasons, so they agree. Then Grantaire meets Enjolras and falls madly, desperately, blindingly in love, and there’s no way he’s going to tell the truth now, is there?

(Jehan loves Enjolras, he does, but he can’t help but side with Grantaire. Enjolras is the human ideal and Jehan is a poet—he needs reality in all its grotesque beauty to write. So, yes, Enjolras is the human ideal and Grantaire? Is human. Jehan loves his angels, but forever walks among mortals.)

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They spend the night in Phoenix. It's one of those rare times they just don't bother with a motel and sleep in the car.

It probably says something that they barely even feel sore in the mornings anymore. But life on the road is many things, luxurious not being one of them.

They don't want to spend too much, because their money that isn't in their Vegas fund or reserved for gas is dwindling, so they end up singing for their lunch. They have it down to an art-- Grantaire plucking away on a guitar they'd gotten for twenty dollars (it had been some local musician in Knoxville's baby, and he had used it to woo many a fair maiden. His wife had been unamused) and Éponine singing. They stay out for an hour and a half and rake in about thirty-five dollars, which is mostly spent on burgers.

"Remember that place in Clayton? With the bison burgers?" Éponine asks around a mouthful of French fry.

Grantaire swallows. "Zeppelin's? Yeah. I still email Tracy whenever we stop by a library. What's up?"

"Nothing. I just can't get a burger without remembering being there. Mostly because I think that's the first time I've gotten a free quesadilla because my friend dances on the table to "All of my Love." I think we have, like, three pages in the scrapbook dedicated to that place."

"Yup. They got some damn good burgers here, too, though. So, what do you want to do after this?"

Éponine shrugs. "No idea, never been to Phoenix. Curl up beside an AC?"

Grantaire laughs at her. They'd stayed in Tampa for New Years and mocked the people bustling around in coats buttoned up against the 60-degrees weather as they relaxed in tank tops and shorts. Éponine however, has been a northern gal all her life and absolutely melts in the heat. Grantaire, who was born in Paris, Texas and adapted to New York’s chill, remains steadfastly amused by this.  

They end up staying two days because the second Tuesday of the month is apparently free admission for the Desert Botanical Garden ("It's a Phoenix Point of Pride, R!" "Éponine, you touristy scum."). It may be close to boiling, but the scenery is beautiful. There are flowers everywhere-- which, yeah, garden-- and the tour guides are telling me which ones are which but Grantaire and Éponine are snapping pictures on the cheap, plasticky cell phone rather than paying attention. Éponine has been making a scrapbook of their trip, because scrapbooking is one of those bizarre hobbies she picked up to fill the void petty thievery had left. There was a section in it entitled "Places We Have To Drag Jehan," and this definitely counted.

They text their poet two pictures (a huge cactus with what looks a brain on top and a green glass statue), as per their deal—they let Jehan know that they’re okay, and Jehan doesn’t use his truly terrifying ninja poet powers to track them down.

Jehan doesn’t have quite the bond with Éponine and Grantaire that they have with each other, but he’s definitely close. After all, Éponine and Grantaire live to defy simplicity, and Jehan is made of everything but. He’s flowery in everything but his prose. There's flowers in his hair and permanent stubble across his jaws. He wears pastels and has combat boots and a small collection of knives thrown in the back of his closet. He has his masculine and feminine sides perfectly balanced, mostly because he rarely bothers to distinguish between the two. The most care he puts into his outfits is to gage how much they’ll cheer him up when he catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He cares so little about what people think of him that people think about him constantly.

He is the best of them, and everyone knows it. Even Éponine and Grantaire, who are fully aware of the Romantic’s love affair with a pipe.

The tour lasts what they guess is about an hour, but honestly they haven’t been checking. They just want to stay here, suspended in time. It’s not perfect, because Grantaire is getting tired and Éponine is sweating like a pig—like a recovering alcoholic, Grantaire teases her—but perfection is highly overrated and generally quite biased.

They spend the rest of the day wandering around Phoenix with periodic breaks so Grantaire can catch his breath and Éponine doesn’t succumb to heatstroke. By the time they get back to their car, their shirts are basically soaked through, so they strip them off along with shoes and socks and sit in a back lot for thirty minutes, Grantaire going on a quick ice cream mission, while they dry.

They sleep in the car with the windows cranked down again because there’s no reason not to. Éponine sets an alarm on the phone so that they wake up in time to watch the sunrise while they’re driving.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, yeah, this is character study with some plot. Eponine and Enjolras' relationship is to be explored next. Metaphors will abound.


	5. How to Handle all the Sadness in Your Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, kind of unconnected stuff. Warning for very mild-- and purely theoretical-- body horror. But, again, super mild.

People who didn’t know Enjolras personally had theories about him. They were numbered and various, but almost equally ridiculous: he was a virgin, he was an automaton, he was a bizarre genetic combination of Joan of Arc and John Lennon, he never even touched alcohol.

Enjolras, while nowhere near nymphomaniac standards, was familiar with sex (including one disastrous encounter with a girl and a post-coital conversation beginning with, “Huh. I'm gay,” which then progressed to “no, of course it doesn’t have anything to do with _you,_ why are you so upset?” and ended with Enjolras running out a door in his boxers and dodging a pencil case being hurled at his head). He was far from robotic, although Bahorel and Courfeyrac had, at several points, demanded he strip off his shirt so they could check for a control panel. He had two perfectly normal parents, thankyouverymuch, who he talked to exactly twice a year if he couldn’t avoid it.

And if he never drank, the hangover he had the morning Jehan came back from his Canadian poetry seminar would probably be far less severe.

As it were, Les Amis we passed out on the floor of his, Jehan, and Courfeyrac’s apartment in various stages of alcohol induced-coma. Then Courfeyrac’s cell phone started blaring “If I Die Young” and Courfeyrac stumbled out of the room before his friends could kill him and, more importantly, his phone.

Roughly ten seconds later he dashed back in with far more coordination than proper given the time of morning level of inebriation.

“Everyone up, everyone get your shit packed together.” When a chorus of complaints and threats answered, he continued. “Jehan’s about forty-five minutes away.”

That got people up. While their poet was, by no means, a neat freak, he wasn’t one to appreciate the total disarray the room was currently in. If there was one thing, _one thing,_ that absolutely terrified Les Amis, it was Jehan, who spent his time between being the sweetest person alive and reminding everyone that his introduction to poetry had been Poe.

The tidying and personal grooming that was accomplished by the bumbling, stumbling, hungover inhabitants of the apartment was probably sad and a bit pathetic to outsiders, but to the assembled Amis it was a great accomplishment. Thirty minutes later, when both the room and the friends were in a state the poet would not disdain, they looked at each other and began a mass exodus to the nearest, greasiest diner, regardless of the lack of love Jehan held for them.

To understand why Les Amis loved Jehan, a certain understanding of Jehan was necessary; that is, Jehan subscribes to a certain brand of insanity. He _felt_ —through words in a poetry book, through being around others, by just being himself. And he felt deeply and gluttonously. Jehan was in the habit of denying himself no sensation, particularly emotion. What he displayed was what he felt, unadulterated and true. In short, Jehan’s insanity was to be the most human of them all. And he was loved for it. To Les Amis, Jehan was something to fight for: freedom of creativity, of expression. Jehan was passion, and Les Amis were courting revolution. It was only logical.

That being said, no amount of love or fear could have torn the ragtag assortment consisting of Bahorel, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Marius, and Enjolras from their wonderful, wonderful, grease-drenched breakfast food.

Feuilly (who had shown up (partly) to greet the poet and (mostly) to mock his friends) spotted him first, which, as he was the only one without a pounding headache and Jehan was dressed as per usual, was just as well. When the rest of the group caught sight of him, their reaction consisted of joy mixed with pain as the vibrant colors of his clothing hit their eyes like a brightly-colored battering ram.

Jehan practically skipped over to their table, then turned around and whistled because he was a horrible, terrible person intent on causing his poor, hungover friends pain. “Over here!”

He was soon joined by a man in a light grey shirt and jeans, a green hoodie tied around his waist.

“Grantaire, this is Bahorel, Marius, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Feuilly, and Enjolras,” Jehan said, pointing at each in turn. “They’re usually much more put together than this. I promise they’re not always hungover.”

“Well, I generally am,” Grantaire smiled, “so I think we’ll be fine. I’m Grantaire. There’s technically a third musketeer, but Éponine’s still in the car.”

As has already been covered, Enjolras drank. He was a double major in poli-sci and law who only cared about school as much as it could help him to advance his cause, _of course_ he drank. With that being said, it perhaps would have been better if he didn’t. It wasn’t that he was an embarrassing drunk—at least, no more so than the next man, provided that the next man was not Courfeyrac. It was the parts after the drinking that Enjolras took with no sort of grace. Enjolras, to be blunt, dealt with hangovers like a bitch. There was no part, from the light sensitivity to the headache to the taste in his mouth, that he was good with. This is why it can perhaps be excused that the first thing Enjolras, in all his hazy, achy glory, said of Éponine was, “What the fuck is an Éponine?”

(It also says something on the subject of Grantaire that he took one look at Enjolras, whose hair was in complete disarray, who was wearing a crumpled T-shirt and sunglasses that belonged to Bahorel’s last girlfriend and a scowl, and fell headlong into his orbit.)

The amusement-tinged awkwardness lasted less than half a minute, when Éponine walked in and recognized Marius.

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Éponine and Enjolras had an odd relationship that was so simple it appeared vastly complicated. They both loved the same man, in very different way, and had very different relationships with him that they envied each other for immensely. It wasn’t that Éponine longed for romance with Grantaire, or that Enjolras would be happy in a purely platonic relationship with him; in fact, it was almost the opposite of what they wanted. But each had an irrational fear that the other would sweep Grantaire away and keep him out of reach. This fear was frustrating for each of them, but recognizing that it was inane did not make them unafraid. They both felt strongly for him. Éponine was a connection to the earth, steady and warm and protective, and Grantaire was the same for her. As for Enjolras, he was sometimes mystified that humanity ever made it past caves and stone clubs if they felt as strongly as he did, like they could conquer armies for the way a smile stretched across a face.

But fear is fear and rarely ever logical.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

So, this road trip was actually a fantastic idea for getting over shitty relationships and deadly addictions, but it also sort of sucks. For one thing, they miss, like, everyone. And everything. Grantaire even genuinely misses Montparnasse, and he had been very passive-aggressively against Éponine’s wonderful decision to date someone who probably spent his free time slitting little old ladies’ throats for their pension.

(Grantaire’s feeling on Montparnasse were complicated. On one hand, he wanted Éponine to go nowhere near him. On the other, Gavroche had A) never dated him, and B) far outclassed him, at least in terms of being a terrifying motherfucker.)

But one of the things at the very tipitty-top of Grantaire’s “Things I Miss Like A Mother” list is the sex.

He and Enjolras have, for all intents and purposes, broken up. Of course, it was less of a break-up than Grantaire running away because confrontation is not his forte. The point is, he was no longer in a relationship.

He had also been celibate since they started the road trip.

At first, he kind of had to be. When movies portrayed going cold turkey, they generally aimed for realism but had the faint sheen of Hollywood glamor. Withdrawal in real life wasn’t glamorous. There was a period where he couldn't eat actual food, sweating through every article of clothing he owned, and on one fun occasion roughly thirty hours after the symptoms of withdrawal first set in, a seizure. He had had no illusion it would be pretty, because after having an uncle die after going cold turkey and already having dealt with the heroin version had kind of given him a hint. But somewhere, deep in his subconscious, he had drawn lines. After all, heroin and alcohol were very different animals. One was legal, one wasn’t. one came from a bottle, the other, a needle. Heroin just seemed… darker. Dirtier. But, as it were both were jealous lovers that didn’t appreciate being left. It… wasn’t pretty, and did nothing to make him appear attractive, what with the constant sweating and general deathly pallor.

After that, it was just because he didn’t wasn’t anyone but Enjolras.

(And here he thought he was beating his addictions.)

Before sleeping together for the first time, Grantaire and Enjolras had a very serious conversation because, while sex is never something you want to do _wrong,_ Grantaire wanted this to go as close to perfect as he could manage. What he came away with was this: Enjolras, while not a virgin, was far less experienced than he, and at that ridiculously kinky phase. Grantaire, who had a wealth of sexual experience at his back, knew exactly what he liked, and how much of it he liked, in bed. Enjolras didn’t. He had, from the sorts of websites one deleted their browser history after visiting, picked up things he was sure he would enjoy, things he might like to try, and things he was reasonably certain Grantaire would like. And he wanted to try all of them. As the list dwindled, the only two things Enjolras marked permanently on the “keep” list were man-handling R and, occasionally, tying him to the headboard, which was… highly enjoyable, especially after Enjolras got more and more comfortable with being in a continuous sexual relationship.

Enjolras was far from self-conscious, but before his relationship with Grantaire, he was still in the Hollywood-and-porn induced state of mind where sex should look as good as or better than it feels. Grantaire was slightly more disillusioned. Nothing that came with that amount of bodily fluids, he felt, could aesthetically attractive. Sex came with embarrassing sounds and weird faces and ungodly amounts of saliva. It was supposed to feel good, not look good. In his experience, Grantaire had found that when sex could be referred to as “pretty,” at least one party was faking it. Sex, he felt, was a form of communication: I love you, I hate you, I desire you. Pretenses of beauty just made it less enjoyable.

That being said, post-coital-glow Enjolras was quite possibly the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen. He was generally came away flushed, which on Enjolras meant he was pink from the roots of his hair right down to where it faded around his bellybutton. His eyelids were at half-mast, and it was one of the few times Grantaire saw him truly relaxed. And the hair. Enjolras has a veritable mane of golden hair. Not the shampoo-commercial kind, but the sort where his hair can’t decide whether to be outright curly or just wavy and just kind of goes for both. Grantaire loves Enjolras’ hair, even first thing in the morning when it’s apparently trying to eat him. Enjolras’ sex hair is all of Grantaire’s kinks.

It’s kind of sad to think he won’t be seeing it anymore.

The sad truth is, Grantaire hates himself too much to be anything but self-aware. He knows who he is— a recovering alcoholic, a recovering heroin addict, an artist, a cynic. He is, forever, _recovering._ Because that’s the secret of addiction: you’re never recover _ed._ It’s your cross to bear or drop until your last breath. And he’s screaming in his skin. Some days he’s fine, but some days he feels like if he could just peel off his skin, just flay it off, he’d be free. It’s constricting him, binding him to be Grantaire-shaped, and he just wants to pull it all apart at the seams. He’s broken, and Enjolras’ isn’t. Enjolras doesn’t deserve to be.

He feels that too-tight feeling and takes a deep breath. Éponine’s asleep in the passenger seat; he won't risk her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that happened. Sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> So, fun fact, this was supposed to be more present day and less flashback. Oops.
> 
> Questions/complaints/concerns can be dropped in the comments or to occamsphaser.tumblr.com


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